It's late February, a time when South Alabama's football team, at least in the recent past, would be back on the practice football, taking part in spring drills. This year, the Jaguars won't begin spring practice until March 10, waiting until after the school's spring break, allowing the team to go four weeks without interruption.
But just because spring practice doesn't start for a few more days, that doesn't mean the South Alabama football staff is taking it easy. Instead, head coach Joey Jones said the group, which recently added three new members, is hard at work on a variety of things.
"There's two critical things right now,'' Jones said. "One, we're recruiting for the 2015 class and, two, we're getting ready for spring training. Also sprinkled in there, we're working with our guys in the morning, working on our offseason program. That's good for our new coaches to get to know their players and be around them. We're pretty busy right now.''
Tim Bowens (wide receivers), Robby Brown (running backs) and Mike Adams (inside linebackers) have joined the Jaguars' staff for the 2014 season. All are recent additions and thus are learning the systems they'll be coaching and their players, not to mention simply learning their way around campus and the community.
"Because of our coaching turnover, (the later spring practice start) gives us more time to get ready, and I also like the idea of just going four weeks straight rather than having two weeks, take a week off (for spring break) and then finish,'' Jones said. "I think going four weeks straight is advantageous as well. We'll see. We'll compare it this year to what we've done in the past and see what we'll do in the future.''
As those preparations are put in place, there are some areas that are of particular interest, Jones noted.
"On defense, with coach (Travis) Pearson coming in (as defensive coordinator), he's going to run the same scheme, but add his flavor to the defense,'' Jones said of Pearson, who was promoted I'm eager to see how the defense comes to the coordinator's job created when Kevin Sherrer left for Georgia's staff.
"On offense, it's a deal where we've got to find depth. We have some linemen that we know can play, but we've got a bunch of young linemen that we're going to give a lot of reps to to see how they've progressed. At receiver, we've got, really for the first time I've been here, a bunch of receivers who can make plays. We should be two-deep at those positions and it will be interesting to see how that pecking order works out.''